PeaceTimes Edition 111: Moms, Money, and Microcredit

5 May 2011No Comment

“Learn to depend on yourself before you depend on anyone else, and know that you can do whatever you want on your own.”

That’s some of the advice Peace X Peace Outreach Manager Abby Smith has received from her not-so-outdated “stay-at-home mom.” You’ll read more of the words that have molded Ms. Abby in this issue. You’ll read our take on why microcredit isn’t flying quite so high any more. And in this issue, as in every 2011 PeaceTimes, CEO Kim Weichel offers an opportunity to take action.

Here’s to Mom, Mr. Mom, Sister Mom, Grandmom, and Moms together, everywhere. Happy Mothers Day! May you always have enough, and someone to share it with.

It starts with a circle. In every culture, Necessity, that well-known mother of invention, has combined with Mother Wit and a few neighbors and friends to birth informal, egalitarian local systems for saving and sharing, held together by bonds of social trust. Common storehouses, rotating funds that pool savings for the benefit of each member in turn, and cooperative village banks have probably all been in use somewhere in the world since prehistory.

We all know that investing in women is the key to ending world poverty. Women’s share of the labor force is increasing in almost all regions of the world. Women now comprise more than 40 percent of the paid global labor force, and we know that women also perform much more than our share of the world’s unpaid labor (cooking, childcare, growing crops, and more). Expanding economic opportunities for women is vital!

Being my age is not always easy. In the all too cliché song Britney Spears recorded several years ago, “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.” We 20-somethings are still on the path of finding out what it really means to be a woman. We are beginning to take on responsibilities and make decisions that affect more than just us. We all have people in our lives who we look to for an example, for advice, and often, as women, for a shoulder to cry on. I have a mom, a stepmom, aunts, a mother-in-law, friends, and colleagues I can look to for examples of womanhood.

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